A conservative-moderate Republican showdown is shaping up in House District 45 as state Rep. Tom Sloan, a veteran politician, faces a charge from the right in Keith Noe, a retired Los Angeles Police motorcycle officer who has returned to Kansas to live on the family farm.

Sloan, first elected to the Legislature in 1994, has name recognition and a voting record last legislative session of supporting tax increase proposals for schools and opposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

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Sloan said he realized some voters didn’t like his voting record. But, he said, after he explains the issues in depth, many voters end up agreeing with him.

One who doesn’t is Noe.

“I’m not happy seeing the trend I see going on in Kansas,” Noe said. “It doesn’t have the stable values it had in the ’50s and ’60s.”

The two face off in the Aug. 3 GOP primary. The winner will run against Libertarian Patrick Wilbur, of Lawrence, in the Nov. 2 general election. There is no Democratic candidate.

Sloan and Noe say they are campaigning door-to-door in the district, which covers western Lawrence and northwest Douglas County, including Lecompton.

Noe said he wanted to put on the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.

“I trust the people to vote it up or down,” he said.

During the 2004 legislative session, the issue was a divisive one. An effort to place on the ballot a proposal to put the same-sex marriage ban in the state constitution failed to get the necessary two-thirds support in the Legislature.

Sloan voted against the proposed amendment. He said there was no reason to put a same-sex marriage ban in the state constitution because there already is a state law, which has been upheld in court, that marriage can be only between a man and a woman.

Noe said he feared that law could be quickly abolished.

“Any state judge can overturn a law any afternoon,” he said.

Sloan and Noe also disagree on the issue of school funding.

Sloan said the state had not increased base state aid per pupil for three years.

“Schools need more money,” he said.

“Does that please everyone? No. But the majority of people who express an opinion say they are willing to pay more,” he said. At a recent campaign event, Sloan said a half-dozen senior citizens told him they were prepared to pay higher taxes for schools “because they have grandchildren who are in school.”

Noe said taxes already were too high. He said inequities in school funding needed to be fixed and administrative expenses needed to be cut, but added that he needed to research the issue more.

“We need to study the situation,” he said.

Sloan is chairman of the House Higher Education Committee and has taken a leadership role on the national stage in wind energy. He has been endorsed by the Kansas National Education Assn. and Kansas Families United for Public Education.

Noe grew up on his family’s farm near Lecompton, served in the Marines, then served for 27 years in the Los Angeles Police Department, where he spent a lot of time riding a motorcycle in the traffic enforcement division.

“I enjoyed every minute of it, but now I’m happy farming,” he said.

Noe has been endorsed by the conservative Kansas Republican Assembly.